Capt Harry Defrates (pictured above)
joined Cosens of Weymouth after the Second World War and sailed as master of
several of their paddle steamers including the Embassy, Victoria, Monarch
and Consul. He left the company in 1961 and, for the following four
seasons, was in the forefront of attempts to give the Princess Elizabeth
and Consul new leases of life in private ownership. He then went to stay
with his son, an official with the United Nations, in Beirut, then still a
playground for the rich in the days before it fell into a dreadful period of
chaos, anarchy and terrorism in the 1970s.

Whilst there his thoughts turned to how
he and his wife were going to live in retirement without the benefit of any
company pensions and, mixing with a number of wealthy businessmen known to his
son, he found possible backers for buying his own passenger vessel with a view
to setting up in business himself. He wrote to the UK shipbrokers H E Moss and
they responded with three ships available for sale getting the spelling of his
name wrong in the process.

One of these ships was the Thornwick, an excursion
vessel built in 1948 for service on the Yorkshire coast.

As it turned out, nothing came of all
this and Capt Defrates did not, in the end, get the financial backing needed for
his scheme. He returned to the UK and, for the next couple of years, continued
to be involved with the sea, sailing as master of the steam yacht Medea
in a venture on the South Coast and trying hard to get a new life for the
Princess Elizabeth on the Sussex Coast. After that he lost his pilotage
certificates due to his age and, still needing to work to live, had several
summer jobs, first selling tickets in the booking office for the small passenger
vessel Weymouth Belle and then collecting the money in various Weymouth
car parks where he sat in his hut with his ticket bag slung over his
Harris tweed sports jacket and with his old captain's cap perched on his head.
He died in the mid 1980s.

As it turned out, the Thornwick
was bought by Bolsons of Poole who put her into service at Bournemouth,
subsequently renamed Swanage Queen, as a direct replacement for Cosens
Embassy which had been withdrawn after the 1966 season. With the arrival of
the newly built Dorset Belles, in the mid 1970s, Swanage Queen was
sold for further service on the Thames where she ran for several years. The last
I heard of her, she was a houseboat in Conyer Creek off the Swale.

Capt Defrates on the starboard bridge
wing of the Princess Elizabeth passing through the Town Bridge at
Weymouth in September 1961.